Steve Ellner's Blog on Venezuela, Latin America and Beyond

The centralization of ownership of the private media in the United States and elsewhere has become increasingly pronounced, at the same time that its reporting has become increasingly one-sided and monolithic. My blog seeks to expose this lack of objectivity and present alternative ideas that point in the direction of much-needed fundamental change.

Thursday, November 24, 2016

IS THERE A POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC LOGIC BEHIND TRUMP’S ENCOURAGEMENT OF RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA?

One may ask why does Donald Trump as president
continue to encourage racism and xenophobia, as shown by his naming of Steven
Bannon as chief strategist. After all, from a political viewpoint it doesn’t
appear to make sense. Trump needs to veer to the center and distance himself from
the extreme right to secure the support of his Republican Party, particularly
in congress, and try to neutralize the mainstream media. The conclusion that
some draw is that it’s all about Trump’s personality; after all, he is not a
political person. Others attribute the appointment of Bannon to Trump’s racism.
Still others believe Trump is appealing to racism which is widespread in the
U.S. and adds up to many votes.

In fact, Trump’s triumph in key states with a large
working class population was not due to his racism. Millions of Trump voters in
the Rustbelt and elsewhere had previously voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Trump won because he promised to reverse globalization and the loss of U.S.
jobs and investment. The xenophobic and even racist discourse served to enhance
the credibility of Trump’s promises. It also seemed to demonstrate that he was
serious about bringing about change, a promise made by Obama in 2008 on the
basis of his race and by Hillary in 2008 and 2016 on the basis of gender.

Workers who voted for Trump did so not because he
was going to build a wall on the Mexican border, but because his promise to
build the wall underpinned his promise to halt the outflow of jobs and
investments. It was a rhetorical ploy that worked; it got him elected.

The strategy was no easy feat. After all, Trump ran
as a Republican and the Republicans, not the Democrats, fully backed Obama’s
efforts to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). And the Republicans, more
than the Democrats, backed Clinton’s NAFTA in 1994. The working class had all
the reason to be skeptical about Hillary’s rejection of the TPP, as demonstrated
by the Wikileaks emails. In order to back his claim to being anti-globalization
and intent on reversing globalization, Trump had to do outrageous things. The
outrageousness seemed to demonstrate that he would not be deterred from
carrying out his promises, that he had the guts to buck powerful establishmed
interests. And his tacit and not so tacit alliance with the racists served to
demonstrate that he would do the impossible to stand up to the Mexicans and the
Chinese, and above all the multinationals that invest in those nations.

Empty rhetoric is usually not completely empty. It reflects
reality, albeit to widely varying degrees. When Trump pledged himself to twist
the arms of Carrier to scrap its plans to move their Indianapolis plant to
Mexico in 2019, only fiery anti-Mexican rhetoric could convince the workers
that he meant business. Their support for Trump was not a measure of their
anti-Mexican sentiment, but rather their desperation.

In the short run, Trump may be able to score some
victories, but more of a symbolic nature than anything else. He may be able to
get some companies to refrain from moving plants out of the country and some to
actually return capital. The enticements will be tax breaks, anti-worker
legislation and other benefits, more than rhetorical threats. And in the long
run, not even those inducements will do the trick. What Lenin said about
imperialism a century ago, is applicable to globalization: it’s not a policy, rather
it’s a stage. Globalization is a result of the mobility of capital made
possible by technological developments and made necessary by certain contradictions
in the system that reached a threshold in the 1970s. There’s no turning
back, Donald Trump notwithstanding.

Saturday, November 5, 2016

FOX NEWS: FAIR AND BALANCED!

Having lived abroad for a considerable period of
time, I have not until today had the opportunity to carefully listen to Fox
News. Yesterday and today, I listened to various Fox News programs and concluded
that at least you have to give them credit for being upfront about their
support for Donald Trump, unlike the rest of the corporate media which supports
Hillary without acknowledging their slant. Then I saw Fox’s slogan “Fair and
Balanced.” Is anybody out there really that gullible, or should I say stupid?

About Me

Steve Ellner has taught economic history at the Universidad de Oriente in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela since 1977. He is the author of numerous books and journal and magazine articles on Venezuela history and politics. He frequently lectures on Venezuela and Latin American political developments in the U.S. and elsewhere. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American history at the University of New Mexico in 1980.